Coming2020...

Jim Nelson, a state senator, says this in a nod to the effects that climate change have added to the wildland interface, something experts will echo later. “Urban areas are suffering what we in rural areas have long suffered.”

It’s hard to know if anybody hears him. This is supposed to be a community conversation but the community is not here. The community isn’t even allowed here. Really, it is just the press in a room, TV cameras looming over the heads of the print and radio people, while the various government types pretend to be saying more than they are really saying. After an hour, when the firefighters have said their piece, and the one black man in the room has been overlooked and becomes the only person to make no comment, and the federal appointees have dutifully imparted whatever messaging has been crafted by the people that wrote the messages, someone announces that the meeting is over and that there won’t be any questions until after a tour that is, in effect, mandatory for those of us with questions.